Wednesday, December 23, 2009

CFA rss

One day last week, the very hot day, the Country Fire Authority website failed to proceed. I don't go to the site when it will be busy. I leave it for those who really need it. I won't be threatened by a bush fire and I am not sure why I was posted information about how to protect my home in the case of a bush fire.

A day or so later at the CFA site I saw an rss feed link that gives summaries of all fires throughout the state. I joined. It wasn't a bad fire day the day I did this, but at the end of the day, I had 400 fire summaries in my google reader.

It doesn't seem to be of much practical use to me. Why not make it area specific?

6 comments:

You can get area specific models - through various external sources - but they all link back to the same :(

I blogged a little about it here http://itaintalwaysso.blogspot.com/2009/12/reason-for-outrage-at-cfa-outage.html

and here http://itaintalwaysso.blogspot.com/2009/12/victorian-publics-lives-at-risk.html

the problem with the CFA site is it is a single source and IF it crashed - then effectively those that need it are blind to the bigger picture.It's not just about the neighbour, but as was seen on 07.02.09 - the fires moved at a speed that was unpredicted and many, with the use of the CFA website - could see the path - even if those in charge couldn't - that foresight saved many lives.

Area specific would be good, posting letters out to homes in the country and seaside areas where there is bush. Although, some houses do not have mail boxes.. so i might pay to have community groups who can make accessible fire plans for residents. I wonder how elderly country people go getting fre ready..who would help them? Maybe the CFA? Who knows, I know they are ever busy the CFA.

Yep IAS, your posts led me to take a look at the CFA website. Like the failure of Jetstar reservations last week, there needs to be back up, that is separate cables to a different exchange. I think the CFA site can pretty well cope with huge traffic now. If it can't, it is a disgrace.

Old people are a big problem Cazzie. I would hope that neighbours would come to the fore. For vulnerable towns, perhaps a roster of volunteers. But there has to be somewhere for them to go.

In regars to older people - as long as they haven;t alienated themselves, the locals always look after them.

I looked after the people on my street and my parents had many people under their roof when the fire-storm hit - who all survived. Unfortuntately there are some older folk out there - who not matter who hard you argue always think they are right - They are the people we did lose :(

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